General Care Discussion :: Tank cleaning

[NewResMom]

With the tank kit I bought it told me to only replace 20% of the water a week and to never do a full water replacement. It said it could be too stressful on the turtle. Plus my turtle already seems stressed all of the time already.

This doesn't sound very clean to me. What do you guys recommend? How often and what constitutes a cleaning? What do you use on the glass? Sorry new to this whole turtle thing. Darn Santa!

Don't get me wrong I love Snappy and want him to live a long happy and healthy life just trying to get the tools I need for that and there is so much contradictory information my head is spinning.

[steve]

Everyone will develop their own routine. Water volume and filter type will determine how often you need to clean the filter and change the water. The more water and the better the filter, the fewer maintenance you will have to do. You can even use water test kits to judge water quality and decide what you have to do.

In my opinion, the minimum should be partial water changes 2x a month with filter maintenance every 2 months. A lot of that depends on water source, size of turtle(s), bio media load, chem media types and amount.

[NewResMom]

Thank you. I am a by the book type of person for fear of doing something wrong and hurting our turtle, but there is no one way. Kind of like raising kids! Thanks for your help.

[steve]

RES are usually tough little buggers, I'm sure Snappy will be fine.

If your municipal water source is reliable, you should have an easier time. To drain the tank, I use a small pump connected to a hose and let it do it's thing. For refilling, I reconnect that hose to faucet. They sell kits (sans pump) to drain/refill the tank, one from Python and one from Aqeuon. You can probably gather parts to make one from at a local hardware store for 1/2 the cost.